"Gordon R. Dickson - Time Storm" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

the truck.
Then I saw it, to the left of the highway. It was a line of sky-liigh mist or dust-haze, less than
a couple of hundred yards away, rolling down on uc at an angle.
There was no time for checking on the two back mere to see if they were braced for a racing start
I jammed the key over, got the motor started, and slammed the panel into motion down the narrow
asphalt lane between the brown-yellow of the standing wheat, now gently wind-rippled by the breeze
that always preceded a mistwall, until the plant-tops wavered into varying shades of gold.
2
No mistwall I had seen, with the time change line its presence always signalled, had ever moved
faster than about thirty miles an hour. That meant that unless this one was an exception,
theoretically, any car in good working order on a decent road should have no trouble outrunning it
The difficulty arose, however, wheatтАФas now тАвтАФthe mistwall was not simply coming up behind us, but
moving at an angle ifontcjng the road. I would have to drive over half the length of the wall or
moreтАФand some mistwaQs were up to ten miles longтАФto get out of its path before it caught us, along
with everything else in its way. I held the pedal of the accelerator to the floor and sweated.
According to the needle on the speedometer, we were doing nearly a hundred and tenтАФwhich was
nonsense. Eighty-five miles an hour was more like the absolute top speed of the panel truck. As it
was, we swayed and bounced along the empty road as if five more miles an hour would have seat us
flying off it
I could now see the far end of the mistwall. It was still a good two or three miles away; and the
wall itself was only a few hundred yards off and closing swiftly. I may have prayed a little bit
at tins point, in spite of being completely irreligious. I seem to remember that I did. In the
weeks since the whole business of the time changes started, I had not been this close to being
caught since that first day in the cabin northwest of Duluth, when I had, in fact, been caught
without knowing what hit me. I had thought then it was another heart attack, come to carry me off
for good this time; and the bitterness of being chopped down before I was thirty and after I had
spent nearly two years putting myself into the best pos-
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TIME STORM 5


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rible physical shape, had been like a dry, ugly taste in my throat just before the change tine
reached me and knocked me out
I remember still thinking that it was a heart attack, even after I came to. I had gone on tM"*"ng
that way, even after I found the squirrel that was still in shock from k; the way Sunday had been
later, when I found him. For several days afterwards, with the squirrel tagging along behind me
tike some miniature dog until I either exhausted it or lost it, I did not begin to realize the
size of what bad happened. It was only later that I began to understand, when I came to where
Duluth should have been and found virgin forest where a couple of hundred thousand people had
lived, and later yet, as I moved south, and stumbled across the tog cabin with the bearded man in
cord-wrapped leather leggings.
The bearded man had nearly finished me. It took me almost three minutes too long after I met him
to realize mat he did not understand that the rifle in my hand was a weapon. It was only when I
stepped back and picked up the hunting bow, that he pulled his fancy quick-draw trick with the axe
he had been using to chop wood when I stepped into his clearing. I never saw anything fike it and
I hope I never see it again, unless Fm on the side of the man with the axe. It was a sort of
scunitar-bladed tool with a wide, curving forward edge; and he had hung it on his shoulder, blade-